vochindik: when i am wrong, i am wrong. I decided to crunch the numbers. Pre-war and Pre-Israel, there were 50,000-60,000 Jews in Yemen, 100,000 Jews in Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, 250,000 in Morocco and half a million Jews in Iran and Iraq. There were about 100,000 sefaradic jews in europe and america. The total, in fact, is about 10% of the world jewry, as was stated earlier. i still do not believe the bar ilan study is accurate about israel’s jews.
According to hebrew university in 2007, 3 million ashkenazi jews in israel with about 500,000 being non-halachik jews and about 2.5 million mizrachi/sefaradic jews. They put it at about 35% sefaradic worldwide today.
the whole point with artcroll is that ashkenazi jews (and sefaradi jews) should be interested in learning about sefaradic gedolim (and ashkenazi gedolim).